Earlier this year, Mitt Romney had a Galadriel moment. He appeared to be briefly seized by a vision of himself as an all-powerful, world-striding President Romney, before turning away from temptation and settling for the plain old Mitt Romney he has always been. It was political theater at its most bizarre, a flack-driven frenzy that doubled as a flashback to the self-delusion that blinded the Romney 2012 campaign in its final days. With Romney now out of the way, Jeb Bush has consolidated the support of the GOP's moneyed class with surprising alacrity. As Politico noted last week, the contest...

New Englanders are no stranger to hurricanes, enduring the likes of Bob in 1991 and Donna in 1954, which packed winds over 100 miles per hour and caused hundred of millions of dollars in damage. But that was kids' play compared to the storms that hit the region centuries ago. Using sediment deposits from a Cape Cod pond, scientists said Wednesday that hurricanes more powerful than any on record in modern times swamped New England between the years 250 to 1150 A.D. And they were pretty frequent, with 23 hurricanes recorded - one for every 40 years - from what...

The former general manager of the Ritz-Carlton New Orleans, where embattled "NBC Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams reportedly roomed during Hurricane Katrina, said Sunday (Feb. 8) that neither mass flooding nor floating human remains were near the hotel after the levees broke. Her statement raises questions about Williams' stated Katrina experiences and could add to a pool of public skepticism regarding his tale. Williams recounted his time reporting on Katrina in a 2006 interview with Disney CEO Michael Eisner. "When you look out of your hotel room window in the French Quarter and watch a man float by face down,...

NBC News anchor Brian Williams' 2006 claim that he saw a dead body float past his hotel window during Hurricane Katrina is drawing fresh skepticism in the wake of his own admission on Wednesday that he lied about being aboard a helicopter that was hit by enemy fire during the Iraq war. Despite a swift apology on his Nightly News program, Williams is at the center of a media firestorm after it emerged that his old war story that he has retold numerous times over the past 12 years has become increasingly exaggerated. Williams was forced to apologize this week...

Ava DuVernay, the director of the Martin Luther King historical movie "Selma", is set to again team up with the film's star David Oyelowo for a new project about Hurricane Katrina. DuVernay and Oyelowo, who were both finalists at this year's Golden Globes, will "develop a new narrative feature film chronicling a sweeping love story and complex murder mystery during the time of Hurricane Katrina," Participant Media said Monday. The project will mark the pair's third collaboration after "Middle of Nowhere" and "Selma", which has been nominated for this year's Academy Award for Best Picture.

Chris Kyle, the now-deceased Navy SEAL who is celebrated in Clint Eastwood's movie "American Sniper" was a proved liar. Jesse Ventura, the former military man, wrestler and governor of Minnesota, sued Kyle before he died, claiming that he defamed Ventura in his memoir, "American Sniper." Kyle claims to have punched out Ventura in a bar after Ventura bad-mouthed the troops who'd been sent to Iraq. Kyle was killed before the trial, but a jury determined that none of what he had written about Ventura was true and awarded Ventura $1.8 million. Because he's a proved liar, we should be awfully...

On Sunday's broadcast of ABC's This Week, there was a consensus moment between former President Bush's chief re-election strategist Matthew Dowd and Katrina vanden Heuvel, publisher of the liberal magazine The Nation: Dr. Ben Carson should run for president.

As Twitchy reported yesterday, Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, facing a runoff election Dec. 6, has resumed campaigning on Twitter, although her #WhereWasBill tweet racked up only one favorite and zero retweets in its first four hours online. (Nearly 24 hours later, itÂ’s up to threeÂ retweets and two favorites.) LandrieuÂ’s resurrected Twitter campaign has finally caught someoneÂ’s attention, although that person is her opponent, Rep. Bill Cassidy, who was happy to answer where he was during Hurricane Katrina. Check out the favorites and retweets on this one. Bill CassidyÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â âś”Â @BillCassidy Mary Landrieu wants to know where I was during Hurricane Katrina? Setting...

**SNIP** When this hospital needed a champion to build and rebuild, literally out of the rubble of Katrina and Rita, ... where was Bill? In the video found here, Landrieu trumpets her own record, referring to herself in the third person, while damning Cassidy as “wishy-washy, unreliable, undependable, not sure who he is, not sure who he was, and not sure who he wants to be.” It would have made for great optics and might have helped her in a runoff pundits are predicting she will lose if Cassidy hadn't tweeted back an answer to her question: “Mary Landrieu wants...

Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu heads into a Dec. 6 runoff as a clear underdog, struggling for another six-year term against a wave of conservatism and Republicans looking to pad their new Senate majority. Fifty-eight percent of voters chose another candidate on Tuesday over the 18-year incumbent. She has the distinction of being the last Democratic statewide elected official in a state where President Barack Obama remains highly unpopular. And her main campaign theme of clout was undercut when her party was forced into minority status: Even if she’s re-elected, Landrieu will lose her vaunted chairmanship of the Senate’s energy committee...

In the fight of her political life, Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu took the gloves off on day 1 of the runoff election between her and Republican candidate Bill Cassidy. Fewer than 24 hours later, the attack Landrieu launched went horribly wrong. The day after neither candidate reached the 50 percent plus 1 vote threshold, Sen. Landrieu held a press conference where she slammed her opponent as absent during the devastation from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Standing in front of a VA Medical Center construction site, Landrieu called Cassidy “wishy-washy, unreliable, undependable, not sure who he is, not sure who...

Fighting for her political life and effectively abandoned by the Democratic Party, Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu went on the attack against Rep. Bill Cassidy, the Republican congressman challenging her in next month’s runoff. At a Thursday press conference in front of a Veterans Affairs medical facility, Landrieu tried to contrast her efforts to secure federal money for her state after Hurricane Katrina hit the state in September 2005 with Cassidy’s supposed failure to lift a finger.

Incumbent Senator Mary Landrieu (D-Louisiana) got off to a bad start in her desperate bid to hold onto her seat. In an attempt to characterize her Republican opponent Bill Cassidy as “unreliable” and “undependable,” Landrieu demanded to know what he had done to help the state recover from 2005’s Hurricane Katrina. Cassidy, an MD, responded that he had been working to provide medical aid to refugees of the storm. With help from friends and neighbors he and his physicians’ group set up an emergency treatment center in an abandoned K-Mart. Landrieu shruugged this off as “small potatoes. While my opponent...

On Tuesday night, Republicans won big: They picked up governorships in blue states like Maryland, Massachusetts, and Illinois, and they held House seats in competitive districts with embarrassing incumbents like Michael Grimm of New York, who physically threatened a reporter and is under indictment for tax evasion. But their biggest win by far was taking control of the U.S. Senate. As of this writing, Republicans had already secured 52 Senate seats, thanks to knocking off Democratic incumbents or replacing retiring Democrats in Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Montana, North Carolina, South Dakota, and West Virginia. Another GOP pick up is probable in...

Former Sec. of State Hillary Clinton said she learned all she needed to know about Sen. Mary Landrieu by watching her work to get funding for New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Clinton recalled she and Landrieu's experience in the U.S. Senate together during a get-out-the-vote rally at the Sugar Mill in New Orleans on Saturday. She touted Landrieu's leadership and how she prioritized Louisiana's women and families while urging the crowd to vote Tuesday. Clinton and Landrieu served in the Senate together from 2001-2009. Clinton said her greatest memories of Landrieu came in the aftermath of Katrina. She remembered Landrieu...

While President Obama has returned to the campaign trail to court the black vote ahead of the midterm elections, race has arisen as an issue in two key Senate races, albeit for very different reasons. A new television ad airing in Louisiana makes the case that the nation’s first black president has been bad for the black community. The ad comes from a group called “Progressives for Immigration Reform” and uses images of Hurricane Katrina devastation and blacks standing in unemployment lines to argue that “our own president” wants to allow in millions of illegal immigrant workers to “take jobs...

It was not hard for me to make the connection between the tragedy in Ferguson, Missouri, and the catalyst for my work to stop the climate crisis. It was all over the news in August: images of police pointing military-grade weapons at unarmed black people with their hands in the air. These scenes made my heart race in an all-too-familiar way. I was devastated for Michael Brown, his family and the people of Ferguson. Almost immediately, I closed my eyes and felt the fear I have for my own family. In the wake of the climate disaster that was Hurricane...

NEW ORLEANS — Former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin was sentenced Wednesday to 10 years in prison for bribery, money laundering and other corruption that spanned his two terms as mayor — including the chaotic years after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. Nagin was convicted Feb. 12 of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars from businessmen who wanted work from the city or Nagin’s support for various projects. The bribes came in the form of money, free vacations and truckloads of free granite for his family business. The 58-year-old Democrat had defiantly denied any wrongdoing after his 2013 indictment and...

Kevin McGill, Associated PressJuly 9, 2014 Former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for his conviction on bribery, money laundering and other corruption charges. Prosecutors said the actions for which he was convicted spanned his two terms as mayor — including the chaotic years after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. U.S. District Judge Helen Berrigan handed down the sentence Wednesday morning. (snip)

Rep. Henry Cuellar hoped the immigration mess would not become Obama's Katrina moment. It has. The difference between Bush and Obama is that Bush cared. He might have taken too long to make decisions, but he did care. Obama doesn't care about anything other than himself. As we've noted here, Barack Obama has effectively imposed Martial Law on detention sites which house illegal aliens who are flooding across the border. A member of United States Congress was denied access to Fort Sill and was told he has to make an appointment. Then the administration announced put the hammer down. Among...

NEW ORLEANS — C. Ray Nagin, the former mayor of New Orleans who was convicted in February on corruption charges, was sentenced to 10 years in prison on Wednesday in federal court in New Orleans. Mr. Nagin was found guilty in February on 20 counts, most relating to kickbacks from contractors looking for city work. The sentence was imposed by Judge Ginger Berrigan of United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana. Mr. Nagin, a Democrat, was arrested in January 2013, nearly three years after he left office. He was charged with taking kickbacks in the form of...

George W. Bush was widely criticized for his administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the Gulf Coast in 2005. Among other things, Bush was slammed for praising then-FEMA director Michael Brown by saying “Brownie, you’re doing a heckuva job” and for a photograph taken from Air Force One in which he was seen peering at the wreckage.

Dissatisfaction with President Obama’s conduct of foreign policy has shot up among both Republicans and Democrats in the past month, even though a slim majority supports his recent decision to send military advisers to Iraq to confront the growing threat from militants there, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. The survey suggests that most Americans back some of Mr. Obama’s approaches to the crisis in Iraq, including majority support for the possibility of drone strikes. But the poll documents an increasing lack of faith in the president and his leadership, and shows deep concern that further intervention...

Former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin will have to pay the government more than $501,000 as a result of his conviction on bribery and other charges, a federal judge said Tuesday. Nagin was convicted in February on 20 counts including bribery, fraud, money laundering and conspiracy during his two terms as mayor. The Democrat served from 2002 to 2010 and was known his impassioned pleas for help for the city after Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005. …

Closing arguments in the Ray Nagin corruption trial on Monday centered on whether the former New Orleans mayor was a predator focused on helping himself or prey for an assortment of shady operators. The prosecution portrayed Nagin as an opportunist who pursued businessmen under pressure to win city business, targeting them to line his own pockets. The defense characterized those contractors -- some of whom suffer from their own legal and financial problems -- as scheming to use Nagin without his knowledge, and now eager to testify to help their own situations. After the lawyers made their final pitches, the...

Katrina Victims Say Brad Pitt's Charity Homes Are Already Rotting By Heather Alexander, Houston Chronicle January 2, 2014 Actor Brad Pitt visits the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans during a trip to lobby government officials to increase the speed of re-construction on July 13, 2006 in New Orleans, Louisiana. Pitt and Global Green USA created a sustainable design architecture competition to showcase affordable, energy-efficient construction. Actor Brad Pitt visits the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans during a trip to lobby government officials to increase the speed of re-construction on July 13, 2006 in New Orleans, Louisiana. Pitt and...

A federal judge in New Orleans has dismissed almost all remaining lawsuits against the federal government for damages caused by the failure of levees and floodwalls during Hurricane Katrina, ordering both sides to pay for their own legal expenses. The clean-up ruling by U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval Jr., filed Dec. 20, marks the end of an unprecedented series of class-action lawsuits aimed at collecting damages from insurance companies or the federal government that could have totaled billions of dollars. The final ruling was not unexpected. In earlier decisions Duval found the Army Corps of Engineers was immune from damages...

WASHINGTON -- The St. Tammany Parish school district is getting $67.8 million in disaster loans and accumulated interest for Hurricane Katrina forgiven by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Sen. Mary Landrieu's office announced Monday. The announcement follows FEMA's earlier decision to cancel a $9.9 million loan for the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff's Office and a $14.5 million loan to the St. Tammany Parish government. The loan forgiveness is a response to a provision Landrieu, a Louisiana Democrat, added to a 2013 Homeland Security Appropriations that changed the criteria for loan forgiveness affecting some $211 million in Katrina-related loans.

KENNER, La. —A Louisiana homeowner watched in horror as city workers in Kenner, La. tore down the house she was rebuilding since Hurricane Katrina. “I'm going to wind up in the loony bin. I've tried for seven years to get back home. This is my home. This is my corner. I own this piece of property, and Kenner does this to me,” said home owner Reba Tullier. But the city of Kenner said it has a zero-tolerance policy on blighted homes. Tullier said she had finally lined up help to fix her house, but it was too late. “It's not...

(11-14) 16:23 PST SAN FRANCISCO -- President Obama's mea culpa and proposals to fix his health care overhaul Thursday didn't mollify California Democrats furious over the administration's botched rollout of its signature law, which they fear could dash their hopes of retaking the House and jeopardize the party in competitive races in the state. "This is Obama's Katrina," said Democratic strategist Garry South, referring to the 2005 hurricane that inundated New Orleans and robbed then-President George W. Bush of much of his second-term credibility when his administration bungled the disaster response. "If you're a Democrat running in an endangered seat...

Former Mayor Ray Nagin's federal trial on 21 public corruption charges was postponed again last week — for the third time. The former mayor is now set to stand trial on Monday, Jan. 27, 2014. If and when Nagin does go to trial — or if he pleads to a reduced charge — it will be the final chapter of Hurricane Katrina's political arc. Guilty or innocent, Nagin's fate will bring closure to a city that arguably suffered as much after the storm as during it, thanks in large measure to the former mayor's failure to implement a recovery program...

The list of scandals and blunders in the Obama administration is long, but the roster of people who have been fired by President Obama for screwing up is strikingly short. From Benghazi to the Internal Revenue Service to the Fast and Furious gun-running furor in the Justice Department, the president has been loathe to hold high-level aides accountable for major bungling. The latest example is the president’s backing of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, whose agency mismanaged the crucial launch of the HealthCare.gov website for people to sign up for insurance under Obamacare. If ever there were a...

The Holder DOJ stopped at nothing to convict five New Orleans police officers.In a shocking case of “grotesque” misconduct by federal prosecutors, a federal judge in Louisiana has ordered a new trial for five New Orleans police officers convicted for a shooting on the Danziger Bridge on September 4, 2005 — in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina — and for a subsequent cover-up. This is another black eye for the Holder Justice Department that the media have barely covered. Participating in the misconduct that the judge said had created an “online 21st-century carnival atmosphere” was Karla Dobinski, a lawyer in...

A judge on Friday denied an effort by former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin to postpone his corruption trial, which he said had been compromised by inflammatory comments posted online by prosecutors. Nagin’s argument for a delay stemmed from online postings that recently prompted a federal judge to order a new trial in a murder case involving five New Orleans policemen convicted in connection with the shooting deaths of two unarmed people at Danziger Bridge after Hurricane Katrina. … Nagin, who was mayor during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, is accused of receiving kickbacks in exchange for city contracts, and wire...

NEW ORLEANS — Citing “grotesque prosecutorial misconduct” on the part of federal lawyers here and in Washington, a judge on Tuesday threw out the 2011 convictions of five former police officers who had been found guilty in a momentous civil rights case of killing two citizens and engaging in an extensive cover-up in the days after Hurricane Katrina. In a heated 129-page decision, Judge Kurt D. Englehardt of Federal District Court here declared that federal prosecutors had created a “prejudicial, poisonous atmosphere” in making anonymous online comments before and during the trial at nola.com, the Web site of The Times-Picayune,...

Aerial photos of the flood damage caused by heavy rains along Colorado’s Front Range. A 60-year-old Cedar Cove woman was believed to be the fifth person killed in this week’s historic flooding as authorities scrambled Saturday to reach the 230 people listed as unaccounted for in northern Colorado. Meanwhile, evacuation orders spread throughout the day to communities downstream as rivers continued to flow above flood stage.

Submitted by Brannon LeBouefExecutive Summary: Yes, some guns were confiscated in New Orleans, LA (NOLA) following hurricane Katrina, but it was nowhere near as widespread as some would have you believe. They were isolated incidents and the majority of those were done by out of town LEO and MIL.What you are about to read are my personal experiences and recollection of events as I saw them. While not all-inclusive, I think they lend a fiar account of what really happened on the ground. Realities:While it has been nearly 8 years since the events of Hurricane Katrina, which in my opinion...

Cyber Attack On Utilities Would Be A 'Katrina-Like Disaster Affecting Cities For Days, Months' Geoffrey IngersollMay 22, 2013, 12:49 PMHurricane Katrina NASA The possibility of a cyber attack on U.S. infrastructure is a bigger risk than ever, as utility companies report a record amount of vulnerability probing from outside sources in recent months, according to Bloomberg. The attack on critical infrastructure could be as bad as Katrina, experts say. Risk assessment professional Robert Bea warns of a cascading effect: “Should one piece of a system fail, you end up with these cascades, sort of like a game of dominos,” he...

Despite the many differences I had with former President George W. Bush on a range of public policy issues, or as he called them, "decision points," I found common ground with him in one area, simply because we decided to put aside partisanship and do something good. Hurricane Katrina's devastation and the bungled rescue efforts are seared in the national memory. Bush's "heckuva job" remark turned into a byword for government incompetence and public distrust. The shallowness of it coming at such a terrible and low point left deep wounds that are still healing. That was what it was. But...

(CNN) -- Despite the many differences I had with former President George W. Bush on a range of public policy issues, or as he called them, "decision points," I found common ground with him in one area, simply because we decided to put aside partisanship and do something good. Hurricane Katrina's devastation and the bungled rescue efforts are seared in the national memory. Bush's "heckuva job" remark turned into a byword for government incompetence and public distrust. The shallowness of it coming at such a terrible and low point left deep wounds that are still healing. That was what it...

Where did all the money go? “Your guess is as good as mine,” David Montoya, the inspector general of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, says of $700 million in missing taxpayer money that Louisiana homeowners were given in the wake of Hurricane Katrina to elevate and protect their homes from future storms. A new report released from the inspector general’s office shows that more than 24,000 homeowners who received grants of up to $30,000 to elevate their homes either misspent or pocketed the money. “The fact of the matter is that the money they received was for a...

Aaron Broussard might have hoped his story would have been that of a witty, colorful and effective politician whose career in public service spanned 35 years. On Monday, however, a federal judge will write an epilogue that has the former Jefferson Parish president going to prison for what lawyers predict will be at least five years. The 10 a.m. sentencing in U.S. District Court in New Orleans will essentially end a political corruption scandal that burst open in 2009, quickly toppled the Broussard administration and became entwined with any number of unusual side stories. Judge Hayden Head Jr. was brought...

A nationwide flu outbreak could be a sufficient excuse to call up the National Guard Rapid Response Parallel support module to take control of a “national emergency” with possible declaration of martial law protocols. According to a North Carolina police lieutenant, in some three to six months declarations of martial law could be made throughout the nation. In a two part radio broadcast aired by a Virginia pastor, Lieutenant McCoy has attracted the attention of more than 20,000 listeners. “We’re in huge trouble,” he says as he calls up memories of white, granite gravestones all over Europe; gravestones marking the...

NEW ORLEANS — Former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin has been indicted on 21 corruption charges including wire fraud, bribery and money laundering. The charges announced Friday come from a City Hall corruption investigation that already has resulted in guilty pleas by two former city officials and two businessmen.

Just a few days after Hurricane Sandy devastated parts of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, the New York Times' Paul Krugman crowed triumphantly about the federal government's response to the disaster. "[A]fter Katrina the government seemed to have no idea what it was doing; this time it did. And that's no accident: the federal government's ability to respond effectively to disaster always collapses when antigovernment Republicans hold the White House, and always recovers when Democrats take it back." What a fairy tale. Mature adults understand that earthquakes, hurricanes and other natural disasters are an unfortunate fact of life. They...

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo made headlines and raised eyebrows Monday when he said that while Hurricane Katrina was deadlier than Hurricane Sandy, the latter storm was “more impactful” over all and “affected many, many more people and places than Katrina.” Mr. Cuomo added that Hurricane Sandy had a greater economic impact, destroyed or damaged more units of housing, affected more businesses and caused more customers to lose power. For our part, City Room decided to undertake a little truth-squadding. While apples-to-apples numbers for the two storms are very difficult to come by, especially given that Hurricane Sandy’s costs are still...

Mayor Bloomberg’s Response to Sandy Leaves Many New Yorkers Out in the Cold The mayor has brilliantly stage-managed his handling of the storm, but outside the city’s affluent precincts numerous angry residents feel abandoned by his administration as days have passed and help has remained distant, writes Harry Siegel. “Are you from OEM? Or FEMA?” “No, we’re from Brooklyn.” That was the exchange when, after nearly six hours, the volunteer group I spent Sunday with finally managed to deliver supplies— flashlights, blankets, winter jackets, baby supplies, and pet food—to Staten Islanders who’d been rocked by Hurricane Sandy. On television, New...